


Teamwork

by coolshark



Category: Team Fortress 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-23 02:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6102576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolshark/pseuds/coolshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Classic mercenaries are getting old, and since old mercenaries don't fight as well as young ones, they must be replaced- and who better to find their replacements than the intrepid Miss Pauling? Can she do it? Will she do it? (I don't want to spoil anything but if you know anything about this series the answer should be obvious.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Miss Pauling is a fucking poser.

On one of the screens, a man was running. He dodged gunfire, grenades, and even sniper fire with a surprising accuracy and speed that belied his age. Crowbar in hand, and with his speed, he was a force to behold. 

He charged across the sandy, open area, until he was sheltered in the shadow of one of the many battle-torn buildings that dominated the dust bowl. He put a hand to his chest as he caught his breath, peering around carefully in case of ambush. He straightened the rifle on his back, took a tighter grip on the crowbar, and then went charging off again to another building.

A set of rickety stairs clung to the side of this one, and he went racing up them without a second thought. About halfway up, he stumbled for a step or two, but quickly righted himself just in time to avoid a few stray bullets that would have cost him at least an eye if he’d been hit.

And he went charging on. He even laughed.

The woman watching seemed entirely displeased. Her lip curled, and the cigarette between her lips sputtered and threatened to go out altogether. “Miss Pauling.”

The much younger woman popped into the darkly-lit room as if she’d been waiting outside the door the entire time. Maybe she had. “Yes, Administrator?” She clutched some files close to her chest. TOP SECRET, they read. Well, top secret to anyone but her. And the Administrator, who she was now watching closely with a kind of reverence.

“The mercenaries are getting old,” The Administrator said thoughtfully. She herself was old, older than any of them in fact, but she didn’t have to fight for a living. All one needed for her job was a brilliant and cunning mind, and a ruthlessness far beyond any mercenary. She had all of these qualities and more. She took a pull on her cigarette. “See, there.” She gestured to one of the screens. “The Pyro, for instance. Her attention is wavering, and she’s much slower than she was two years ago. It’s the same with all of them.”

Miss Pauling waited.

“Fire them.”

Miss Pauling could not hide her surprise. “All of them?”

The Administrator took a moment to adjust her headset. “RED team, defend your control point!” she ordered. She turned to Miss Pauling then, her expression displeased. “What did I tell you?”

Miss Pauling took a breath. “You told me to fire the mercenaries.”

“And so?”

“I… am going to go fire the mercenaries now.”

The older woman turned back to the screens. “Very good.” 

Miss Pauling hesitated. “Administrator, what should I do when I’ve fired them, exactly?”

The Administrator did not hesitate. “Warn them that if they speak of their former contracts to anyone they’ll be killed, give them their severance pay, and hire new ones.”

“Of course,” Miss Pauling said quickly. “And… what should I do to hire new ones? I’m sorry, I’ve never exactly hired mercenaries before.”

The Administrator waved a hand dismissively. “Put out an ad. And check the records. I know there are some we have on call.”


	2. I Don't Want To Be a Merc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet the first of the new mercenaries as he tries to figure out where he is in life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to bother about what to name to give Scout so I just didn't give him one.

_Thunk. Thud. Whump. Thunk. Thud. Whump._

The baseball sailed through the air at a startling speed and made sharp contact with the far wall. _Thunk._

After a fraction of a second, it rebounded back to the floor, once more making sharp contact. _Thud._

It bounced upwards, and would no doubt have kept recklessly rebounding around the small room were it not for the hand that shot up to catch it. _Whump._

Then it was thrown again, repeating the process. Then again. Again.

_Thunk. Thud. Whump._

The expression on the boy’s face was more bitter than a sackful of dirty lemons. He threw and caught, threw and caught, as if it were the only thing in the world worth doing. The single bulb in the room flickered and cast a dim light over the dingy room, only adding to the air of stagnancy that seemed to fill the small space up.

_Thunk. Thud-_

The door opened just as the ball bounced up, and instead of soaring gracefully into the boy’s hand, ricocheted off the door and hit the wall again, then, after a few undignified bounces, rolled under the bed.

The boy groaned and slid down the wall he’d been leaning on until he was staring at the ceiling. “Mom, get outta my room. I’m busy.” 

His mother put her hands on her hips, and gave him a look proven to make grizzlies quiver in fear. (It was a long story involving the family’s first and only visit to Yellowstone National Park, and resulted in their subsequent banning.) “Look, honey, I know you’re upset you didn’t make the team, but there’s no reason for you to beat yourself up about it.” She made a small noise of disapproval as she looked around the messy bedroom. “No reason for you to laze around in your room all day like a bum, either. You need to get a job.”

He blew out a burst of air from between his lips in a gesture of years long-spent defying his mother’s wishes. “They didn’t even reject me ‘cause I was a bad player! God, you beat up the umpire twice and then suddenly you ain’t ‘baseball player material’? What a load of bull.”

“Honey, it said in the statement that he’s gonna be in the hospital six months. I told you, you got to expect that when you beat people half to death just for them making you mad.” His mother shook her head in a knowing manner. 

“Well, whattaya want me to do, Mom? _Not_ beat people up? Yeah, right.” The boy snorted and pounded his fist into his open palm. “Some people just gotta be shown who’s boss.”

“Now, now, honey, I know, you and the rest of your brothers. So that’s why-” In a flash, she drew a sheet of paper from inside her blouse. “-I signed you up for this!”

“Wait, what?” He sat bolt upright and immediately made a grab for the paper, which his mother graciously allowed him. He read slowly- reading had never been his strong point, but he could manage a few pages if he had to. “Got Mercs? Apply to Parson’s United Reviews Limited., Gavel Boulevard, Houston, Texas, USA, no later than 5:00 p.m. on March 15. Great payment at a high-risk job, perfect for you if you’re down on your luck and need to prove your mettle. Disclaimer: may result in grievous injury and/or mutilation, loss of life and/or limb, not suggested for pregnant women or children.” At the bottom of the flier was a 1-800 phone number. He looked up at his mother, disbelief spreading over his face. “You want me to go to Houston? To be a _mercenary?”_

“Well, you _do_ owe that umpire a lot of money for putting him in the hospital like that, and this kind of job should give you what you need in no time!” She rested a hand on her hip, a stern expression on her face.

The boy pushed himself to his feet, his expression a mixture of complete disbelief and outrage. He kept the ad clutched tightly in his fist. “Didn’t you hear the part about grievous bodily harm?” He brought the side of his hand down on the side of his arm in a chopping motion. “Or loss of limb? Or, I don’t know, _dying_ being a definite possibility?”

His mother rolled her eyes. “You run all those risks and more whenever you and your brothers get into one of those fights of yours. The difference in this case is that you get money out of it! Besides, it’s only an interview! What’s the problem?”

“The problem is I don’t wanna go, Mom!” The boy stomped his foot on the floor. The action made him look much younger than he already did at twenty years, and that thought sobered him up immensely- but it still not very much. “I mean, yeah, I like hurting people, but so what? I like baseball too, and wouldja look at where that got me.” He stuck out his narrow chin in a gesture of defiance.

His mother narrowed her eyes and took a step forward, narrowing the distance between them by half. She poked his chest with a well-manicured nail. “I’m not going to have a son who doesn’t even work living under my roof. You’re going to go to that interview, and you’re going to do your very best, and if you don’t make the cut there, you’re going to come back without any whining, complaining, or beating some stranger to a pulp for it!” She punctuated each word with a poke to the boy’s chest, and even he withered under her fierce glare.

“Yeah, ‘cause I’ll be in a coffin,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m not going, Mom. What're you gonna do, make me?” He crossed his arms and, refusing the urge to wilt under her gaze, met her glare stubbornly. There was no way in hell she could make him do something he didn’t want to do.


	3. If We Took the Phrase “Cold-Blooded Killer” Literally, All These People Would Be Reptiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scout meets some people. In a delightful, completely unexpected twist of events, he meets some other mercs. Wow. Who could possibly have guessed. Fascinating.

With his arms folded stubbornly over his narrow chest and his lip stuck out in an angry pout, he strongly resembled a whiny toddler, albeit one with much longer arms and legs and much more violent tendencies.

He hated this bus. He’d been riding on this bus for nearly two days now, and every second made him hate it a little more. It was just his luck that the interview started three days after he found out about it, giving him only a few hours to pack before his mother had him shuttled off to Houston. She was going too, she’d said, by plane. Since the boy only had fifty dollars to his name and little time to spare, he’d had to take the bus. 

He considered, not for the first time, just hopping off at the next stop and never making it to this mysterious interview at all. Then he thought about how mad and disappointed his mom would be- possibly enough to track him down and whip him to within an inch of his life- and he relented, and his feet stayed planted on the floor of the bus.

He eyed the other passengers. There were only three of them, and none of them looked like they’d ever been in a fistfight their entire lives. There was the fat woman with the tiny dog. (The tiny dog had a jewel-encrusted collar and he found himself wondering if the jewels were real.) Then there was the middle-aged pencil-pusher who was probably in a failing relationship with his wife. The classy-looking rich lady sitting next to the pencil-pusher was probably the reason for the failing relationship.

The boy snorted. He turned his bat over in his hands. He’d been holding the bat in his lap for the past seventy miles and he was considering more and more just using it on one of the passengers.   
Instead he just stared boredly out the window, his feet tapping rapidly on the floor. Nothing new. Just the same arid wasteland that had been cycling past for the last seventy miles.

Cactus. Rock. Cactus and rock. Dilapidated rest stop. Surprise, another cactus. Road sign. Cac-

He sat upright and craned his head to see if he could catch another glimpse of the sign. Did that say what he thought it said? Houston, 15 mi. Or had it been 75? There was a big difference, but either way, he’d be into the city within the hour. Or two. “Oh thank god,” he muttered.

Thankfully it was in the lesser part of an hour that the bus pulled into the city, and it was only then that he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. He pulled his bag over his shoulders, took his bat in hand, and as soon as the bus stopped, he all but sprinted to the front doors. “Hey, what’s the big deal?” he asked as he turned to the bus driver. He tapped on the door with his bat. “Ain’t the doors supposed to be, I don’t know, open?”

The bus driver was an older man who looked like he hated life with every fibre of his being. “We’re at a stoplight, kid, not a bus station. Wait.”

“First of all, I ain’t no kid. I’m twenty. Secondly, this better be a bus station right now or I’ll start knocking windows out.” The driver only made a noncommittal grunt, so the boy decided to make a point by banging on one of the door windows with his bat. The window cracked.

The bus driver turned his head and gave the boy a long look. He sighed, and he flicked the switch that made the bus door open with a pneumatic hiss. 

Good enough for him. As soon as the doors were open the boy tore out of them like, to overuse one of the most overused cliches, a bat out of hell. Free. He was finally free.

He ran down the sidewalk, a laugh escaping him. Of course he completely disregarded all of the bystanders by simply charging past them. Bat in hand, he was a formidable foe, so most of the people simply stepped out of his way a mere millisecond before he could crash into them. 

After a few minutes, he slowed. He wasn’t sure what to do next. Go to the interview address, obviously. He could at least go and not disappoint his mom. Then, once he either failed or got the job, he could go right back to being a disappointment. He wondered how much time he had left before the interview. Problem was, he never carried a watch.

He grabbed the next stranger he saw by the arm and demanded, “Hey, you got the time? I’m kinda on a schedule here.”

The man looked at the boy, then at the bat, and then quickly at his watch. “Uh, it’s… 4:50. Now, I need to- be somewhere.” He pulled himself away and went ruching down the street.

“4:50? Fuck! I need to be there at 5!” He chewed on his knuckle for a moment. Then he realized that he didn’t even remember where he was supposed to go. Hadn’t he stuffed that flier somewhere in his bag?

He quickly slung it off his shoulder, unzipped it, and began rifling through it at top speed. “Mom’s gonna kill me if I don’t make it there,” he muttered. People walking by gave him irritated looks before they stepped easily around He searched desperately: shirt, shirt, three sandwiches in a row, socks, toothbrush, more socks, even more socks, a pair of pants, and- there! At the bottom was a crumpled scrap of paper. It had to be the flier. Why else would he pack paper?

With a sigh of relief he found that it was in fact the flier. He quickly read off the address. “Parson’s United Reviews,” he muttered to himself, over and over. “Gavel Boulevard.” He gathered up his things in record time and then took off running, only to come to a dead stop no more than three seconds later when he realised he had no idea where that was. He cursed again, loudly. Not a soul turned to look.

And, of course, a second later he was pulled into the alley he’d been loitering in front of for the last few seconds by a large, meaty hand. It was a large, nasty-looking guy with a pair of knuckle dusters on his fists and a scarred face. Your typical bruiser. Probably looking to mug him.

“Well, _why not?”_ the boy growled. His grip on his bat tightened. “Look, pal, I don’t got all day and I’ve taken on guys twice your size in my sleep. Trust me, you don’t wanna do this.”

The big man sneered. “Oh, so prettyboy thinks he can boss me around? How about you hand over your wallet and we’ll call it even.”

“How’s about you _take_ it from me?” He took on a batting stance and held his trusty aluminum bat like he was about to hit a homerun. Except this would be less satisfying than a home run. Way less satisfying. He found himself thinking about baseball for a second as the man drew back his fist to swing. The boy then wondered if he could break all the bones in this moron’s hand with just one swing. First time for everything.

“C’mon now, you two, let’s just put our hands down and think about what we’re doin’ here.” Both the boy and the would-be mugger paused for a moment to try and locate where the voice came from, and then a man who seemed just as amiable as his soft-spoken voice stepped forward from behind the boy. He had on a pair of ugly overalls and a heavy toolbelt around his waist. For all intents and purposes he would have been harmless, were it not for the shotgun he held at his side.

He gestured to the mugger with the muzzle of his shotgun. “Get outta here, you. I better not see you ‘round here again.”

The mugger looked as if he wanted to argue, or fight back, but the unsettlingly calm demeanor of the man with the shotgun obviously convinced him other wise. Besides, knuckle dusters never could stand up to lead pellets. He shot the boy a death glare, then begrudgingly sulked out of the alley.

The boy was not made any happier by this turn of events. He pointed with his bat in the direction the man had gone. “What the hell was that? I coulda taken him, no sweat!”

“Maybe.” The man holstered his gun. “You ain’t from around here, are you?”

The boy lowered his baseball bat. “Well, no. Boston. What’s it to you?”

“So I figure maybe you’ve got somewhere to be, and probably don’t need to waste your time on street fights with thugs just yet.”

The boy smacked his forehead with an open palm. “Oh crap you’re right. Shit, shit- you don’t happen to know where Parson’s Unlimited whatever is, do you?”

“You got the name wrong, but yeah, I know it.” The man nodded agreeably. He gestured to the street with a gloved hand. “You just keep goin’ left for ‘bout three blocks, then take a right. It’s the buildin’ with the big purple letters on it, you can’t miss it.”

“Okay great, thanks, got it, bye!” And just like that, he was off. How much time did he have left? Five minutes? He had no idea. All he knew was that if he didn’t make it to that interview, and on time, he’d be so dead. Mostly in the figurative sense, but there was a good chance it would be literal too, knowing his mom. So he ran as fast as his legs could carry him (For the record, that was pretty damn fast.), without so much as a care for the people that got in his way. He knocked down several. But at least he never so much as slowed his pace.

Once he’d counted three blocks- that was three, wasn’t it? No time to worry- he careened around the corner, then charged onwards. There was hardly any need. He screeched to a stop, bare wisps of smoke rising from his heels, then stared at the tall building just across the street, situated neatly in the middle of the block. PARSON’S UNITED REVIEWS LTD., it read over the entrance, in huge purple letters taller than the boy was, though that wasn’t saying much.

The boy cocked his head to the side as he looked at it. “Huh.”

He then committed at least three minor offenses when he raced across the street to get to it. But he made it, and probably with mere seconds to spare.

“I’m here!” He shouted as he burst through the doors. “I’m here and I’m not late!”

“That’s nice,” the extremely tired-looking woman at the front desk said. “Now take a seat with the others.”

The boy took a look around. The inside of the building was- surprisingly normal. It reminded him of a hospital emergency room: a bored receptionist who’d probably seen it all; a bunch of chairs and books neatly placed everywhere; encouraging posters with adorable animals on the wall. The only difference he could see was that none of the people in the waiting room looked uninjured. To add to that, all of them were heavily armed, as opposed to an actual emergency room, where only most of the people there would armed.

There were three empty chairs in the entire room. One of them, which was right next to a very large man, was immediately off-limits. Not because the guy was so big, though that was a deterrent. No, the reason that particular seat was off-limits was because there was no way in hell the boy wanted to sit next to anyone who reserved a chair for their minigun. That was just fucking weird.

The next empty chair his eyes lit on was also immediately discarded. There was no damned way he would sit between a drooling caveman and what looked to be a pretentious suit-wearing egghead. What kind of idiot wore a suit to be a mercenary? Not one he wanted anything to do with.

The last chair was the most acceptable, for the main reason that since it was on the end of the row, and closest to the interviewer’s door, too, it meant he’d only have to sit next to one other person. That the person in question had tiny spectacles and a bird on his shoulder made no difference.

The boy eased himself gingerly down in the chair. “So, uh. Hey,” he said. “Lots of people here today.”

The eager bird-having idiot next to him bobbed his head amicably, his bird following the gesture. “Oh, ja, but there are many spots to apply for. I’m going to be the medic!” He smiled widely and the bird cooed. 

Of course, the boy thought, he was German.

The boy leaned back in the chair and kicked his legs out. “Medic, huh? Gotta tell the truth here, pal, you don’t really look like you’re cut out for bein’ a merc.” Inside he was beginning to panic. He hadn’t known there would be spots to apply for. What should he apply for? He had no idea.

The man waved a hand dismissively. “Say what you like, but I assure you I am more than fit for this job. And anyway!” He clapped his hands together. “I have been looking for a new area to test my skills in. This is a great opportunity!” He beamed.

“Right, sure, just as great as great as me diving headfirst into a pit full a hungry weasels,” the boy said with a snort.

“Oh, you’ve done that? What was it like?”

The boy gave him a look. Did this nerdy German not know what sarcasm was? He was spared from answering when the prettiest lady he’d ever seen stepped through the interview door with a clipboard in hand.

She flipped a page over and squinted at the paper below. “Alright, so since Mr. Jones was denied, now we need to interview Mr- oh, that’s you!” She gestured to the German. The bird cooed. 

He practically leaped to his feet- the man, that is, not the bird. The bird merely shook its feathers and bobbed its little birdy head- and made a motion like he was tipping a nonexistent hat.  
(The boy unconsciously mirrored the image, though it probably looked better on him since he was actually wearing a hat. Most of his attention was on the lady, though. Her dark hair was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.)

“Ja, I’m here to apply for the medic position. That’s still open, isn’t it?” 

“We don’t pick any mercs until we’ve interviewed all the applicants,” the lady assured him. “And you’re actually the last one for the medic class.” She quickly looked over the sheet, her lips pursed. (The boy thought it was amazing how she could look so pretty even with an expression like that on her face.) “Hm. Now, about those monkey-human brain transplants. Of course you know you wouldn’t be able to do those on any of your teammates, right?”

She ushered the German into the interview room, and the two seemed quite happy to chat it up on the way.

The boy, however, was now stuck on the phrase “monkey-human brain transplants.” His hand went slowly up to the crown of his head. He felt the hair on his arms prickle uncomfortably and he gulped, an extremely nervous expression suddenly on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could write that Medic had transplanted a tail onto someone and you'd be chill with that, wouldn't you.


End file.
